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Karen Curzon salvages her grandmother's China set from the remains of her home in Coffey Park in Santa Rosa. Karen, her husband Ed, and their pets escaped unscathed with few belongings, but lost their home of over 20 years. (Oct. 15, 2017)

The wildfires that have devastated California this month caused at least $1 billion in damage to insured property, officials said Thursday, as authorities raised the number of homes and other buildings destroyed to nearly 7,000.

State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said the preliminary dollar valuation of losses came from claims filed with the eight largest insurance companies in the affected areas and did not include uninsured property.

The estimate of homes and structures burned was boosted to 6,900 from 5,700 as fire crews returned to hard-hit neighborhoods and assessed remote and rural areas they could not get to earlier, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

He said most of the newly counted destroyed buildings burned on Oct. 8 and Oct. 9 — when the wildfires broke out in Northern California's wine country and other nearby areas.

"The estimates are in structures and are mostly homes, but also includes commercial structures and outbuildings like barns and sheds," Berlant said.

Twenty two of the 42 deaths in California's October fires happened in a Sonoma County wildfire, making it the third deadliest in California history. A 1933 Los Angeles fire that killed 29 people was the deadliest, followed by a 1991 fire in Oakland that killed 25.

California Gov. Jerry Brown late Wednesday issued an executive order to speed up recovery efforts as fire authorities say they've stopped the progress of wildfires.